It was just announced today that Goldman Sachs closed their acquisition of Clarity Money, one of the leading PFMs in the market. Rumors have the acquisition amount at ~$100MM, which at 1MM+ users equates to $100/mobile user (#fastmaths). If you had told me two years ago that Goldman would have a fully functional online-only depository product, a lending platform that’s competitive with any fintech loan, and a mobile-first PFM by 2018, I would have scoffed and said that there’s no way a bank could move that “quickly”. Yet through a series of partnerships, investments, and acquisitions, Goldman Sachs has positioned itself as the digital leader for consumer finance amongst all the bulge bracket banks. I expect a ton more acquisition activity in the next 2-3 years by the Citi’s, Chase’s, Bank of America’s of the world in order to be able to keep up. I think the most ironic aspect of this situation is that most of the larger banks were so worried about being disrupted from fintech startups, that many of them were caught by surprise by how quickly GS moved into the space.

Anyways, on to the articles and apologies for missing the last couple weeks, I’m currently typing this out while on a flight out to NYC to go to various events as part of Empire Fintech’s Conference (p.s. hit me up if you want to grab coffee during the week).